.Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 on the "three-way Mexican standoff" between coders, PMs, and designers: "I'm seeing it in a bunch of the early leading edge companies in the Valley, they're circling around a job title loosely called 'builder,' or something like it. And basically the idea is that you had... these separate jobs in the past of programmer, product manager, and designer." " I've been describing what's happening in the Valley companies as sort of this three-way Mexican standoff, where the programmers think that they don't need the product managers and the designers anymore 'cause they can have AI do that, and then each of the other two doesn't think they need the other two either." "I've been predicting they're all correct. The product manager can generate code and design now, and each of them can do the job of all three. The idea is the jobs change so now the job is builder." MTSshow more

@pmarca Every time I see a video or image of this guy, I think it’s AI generated.

@pmarca What a donkey. He is describing working at a startup. This does not scale. VCs are all fucking idiots. They hit a home run once, get lucky once or twice more and then we have to listen to their retarded ideas forever like they're "thought leaders". Not a thought in there.

This maps very closely to what has worked for us @tortastudios over the last 18m, but I think the winning model is complementary, overlapping skills rather than one person becoming equally good at everything. The way we describe our founding team is: “@colin_thornton is a seller who can build. I’m a builder who can sell” There is enough overlap that neither side becomes a bottleneck, but enough specialization that our strengths still compound rather than duplicate each other. As we grow, I suspect we will keep hiring around the same pattern: - A builder who can design. - A builder who does finance. - A builder who can produce content pipelines The secondary skill changes. The common denominator is the ability to build. The problem I foresee is treating “Builder” as another title for programmer, but it is not. A builder is someone who can take ownership of an outcome, cross functional boundaries, and turn an idea into something real without waiting for consensus to hand work back and forth.

In defense of the specialists: One of the biggest productivity gains of the Industrial Revolution came from specialization: instead of one person building the entire car, people became excellent at distinct parts of the process. I’m skeptical that AI suddenly reverses that logic and makes product, design, and engineering interchangeable disciplines. AI creates more T-shaped people. Engineers can independently define more complete user stories, designers can work closer to production, and PMs can prototype concepts without waiting on the full team. That reduces handoffs, shortens feedback loops, and helps each function execute more efficiently s. But broader capability does not eliminate the need for specialists. The outcome we’re seeing at @coinbase is smaller, faster teams where people can cross boundaries, while experts still own the judgment and quality bar in their discipline. Otherwise we risk unknowingly reducing quality across the board by rapidly producing more good-looking work that a specialist would scoff at.

@pmarca This dude just follows his SV friends around and does whatever they do. He's a complete idiot.

@pmarca Which means that expert Product Managers will ultimately win this standoff b/c they *should* have the best judgement about What to Build and How to Price/Promote/Market It. Most Devs and Designers believe success begins/ends with their contribution, so they neglect the rest.

But what makes this work is that the work product - which was previously super valuable, is now disposable. A PM can produce code to explain an idea. The dev can take the idea and develop it for production and throw the original code away. Etc. Where these jobs overlap the output is the creative output, not the work product.

@pmarca Then you have the principal/client who thinks they can replace all 3--the coders, the PMs, and designers--with AI. Then no matter how it shakes out, it all costs 3x or more what it costs with more complexity and risks than the way it was done before

Really--all three are converging on 'Testing', and its missing from most of the discussions. Watch teams 'build'...they prompt (or loop) the AI, then 'Test' what the AI produces for taste, code quality, and business viability. AI is doing the design, coding and most of the 'taste'. AI is. nowhere near generating perfect artifacts. All the roles are becoming testers. New book on it 🤷

@pmarca "You're a builder! You're a builder! We're all builders now!"

@pmarca What's left is the architect.

@pmarca We call them Constructors - The ability to articulate ideas into machine language to achieve human interaction means.

@pmarca Como você vê o impacto disso nos termos de cap table e valuation das startups que contratam esses builders? 🤔

@pmarca Ideas are plentiful, but 99% of them don't lead anywhere useful. A better "idea for you" would be to talk to the people already doing this and tell us whether anything worthwhile has ever come out of it. The answer will be: nada.

@pmarca Mexican standoff between three jobs that used to hate each other. Now they all hate each other even more, but with AI. Progress, I suppose.

@pmarca The garbage in - garbage out rule still applies. Your best software engineers will spend all their time fixing the garbage created by people that don't fully understand the architecture. AI is not there yet unless you software is trivial.

@pmarca Software developers are more important still as they have fundamental technology experience. Product managers and designer don't so they will always be a few steps behind even if they are using AI.

@pmarca The man steering the harness is what wins.

@pmarca Wouldn't that be "developer"?

@pmarca The thought process isn't new. Can a PM or a Designer effectively validate AI-generated code? Yes, they can learn. But years of experience writing production-ready code, scalability, maintainability, performance, etc can't be replaced.

@pmarca I still think product management is dead and no one is going to change my mind

@pmarca

@pmarca I think they’re right about the job changing. AI can help one person code, design, and think through product faster. But someone still has to know what’s worth building, what feels right for the user, and whether it actually holds up. That’s the builder.

@pmarca Well well

@pmarca I can’t get over the fact the his head really is shaped like an egg I thought it was ai

@pmarca I think one caveat is worth mentioning, the willingness of those roles to adapt to the others. Engineers are builders, PMs are the "idea guy" types and designers are builders. Engineers and designers are willing to do everything, PMs are not.

@pmarca the big question is will they get paid 3x?

@pmarca AI is changing the PM-designer-engineer triangle because execution cost is dropping. The scarce skill becomes judgment about what should exist.

@pmarca That’s me! But I wasn’t always using AI to do it. AMA!

@pmarca For now yes. Over time specialization of labor occurs…

Not everyone can do all three. My experience trying to drive an efficient engineering-heavy team to do some of this: A designer often has a level of attention to detail and user empathy a developer doesn't have. A PM's main job is working with customers and formulating the right problems to solve, then training sales teams on selling the product. Developers often don't have those skills. It's true that most of the mechanical things are automated via AI, but the real hard problems that PMs and designers solve are now surfacing much more clearly. Just my 2c.

@pmarca the future belongs to the auteurs

@pmarca watched builder roles fail when no one owns evals after launch

@pmarca Build what? More software? Does the world need more software or less?